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 faith who really were most treacherous enemies of the church. These men taught that certain were by God's foreknowledge so predestined to death that neither Christ's passion nor baptism, faith, hope, nor charity could help them. They might fast, pray, and give alms, but nothing could avail them, because they had not been predestined to life. On the other hand, those who had received this predestination might neglect and despise all righteousness, yet the gate of life would be opened to them without knocking, while against others who knocked, nay shouted, for admission, it would remain firmly closed. A work by one of these heretics had lately fallen into the writer's hands, and it was necessary to drag it to light and completely refute it. This accordingly is done in the present treatise, consisting of three books. In bk. i. the author clears himself of all suspicion of sympathy with heresy of any kind by enumerating and reprobating the 90 heresies by which up to his time Christ's truth had been perverted, the last and worst being that of the Predestinarians. It determines limits for the date of the book that in this list the last but one is the Nestorian heresy. From this and the silence about Eutychianism we may infer that it was written between 431 and 449, just the period when the semi-Pelagian controversy was most active. The author professes that his heretical catalogue was epitomized from Hyginus, Polycrates, Africanus, Hesiodus, Epiphanius, and Philaster, who, he tells us, wrote against different heresies in this chronological order. It is remarkable that the first four of these confutations of heresy are not mentioned by any one else, but still more remarkable that the writer is silent as to his obligations to the tract on heresies which Augustine addressed to Quodvultdeus, although his list of 90 heresies agrees, article by article, with Augustine's list of 88, with the addition of the two later heresies, Nestorianism and Predestinarianism, while the substance of each article is manifestly taken from Augustine. These unfavourable suspicions of the writer's literary morality are confirmed as we proceed. It is the author's plan to mention with each heresy the name of the orthodox writer who refutes it. We are thus told of a number of personages whom no one else mentions—Diodorus of Crete who refuted the Secundians, Philo the Alogi, Theodotus of Pergamus the Colorbasians, Crato, a Syrian bishop, who refuted the Theodotians, Tranquillus the Noetians, Euphranon of Rhodes the Severians, and a host of others of whom we should expect to hear elsewhere if they were not imaginary personages. Moreover, when Praedestinatus ascribes the confutation to real persons his assertions are usually chronologically impossible. Thus he makes the apostle Thomas confute Saturninus, Barnabas in Cyprus the Carpocratians; he makes Alexander, who was bp. of Rome at the very beginning of the 2nd cent., write against Heracleon, who lived in the latter half of the century; the Tertullianists are condemned by Soter, who must have been dead 30 years before Tertullian separated from the church; the imaginary heresiologist, Hesiod of Corinth, is made to be the bishop who first opposed Arius, and in answer to whose prayers that heretic died. We have thus before us, not inaccurate history but unscrupulous and unskilful invention, and it can only be from want of acquaintance with his character as a writer that he is ever cited as an historical authority.

[G.S.]

Praxeas, a somewhat mysterious heretic about whom various theories have been held. He was a Monarchian and Patripassian. Tertullian wrote a treatise against him and places his scene of activity first of all at Rome, but never mentions Noetus, Epigonus, Cleomenes, Sabellius or Callistus. On the other hand, Hippolytus, who denounces these in his controversial works for the very same tenets, never once mentions Praxeas as teaching at Rome or anywhere else. Some have regarded Praxeas as simply a nick-name. Thus De Rossi (Bullet. 1866, p. 70) identifies him with Epigonus, Hagemann (Gesch. der röm. Kirche. § 234) with Callistus. Döllinger however (Hippol. u. Kallist. § 198) and Lipsius (Chronolog. der röm. Bisch. § 175) maintain that Praxeas was a real person who first of all started the Monarchian and Patripassian heresy in Rome, but so long before the age of Hippolytus that his name and memory had faded in that city. They fix his period of activity in Rome during the earliest years of Victor, 189–198, or even the later years of his predecessor Eleutherus. This explanation, however, seems to ignore the fact that Hippolytus must have been a full-grown man all through Victor's episcopate, as he expressly asserts (Refut. ix. 6) that he and Callistus were about the same age. Praxeas remained but a short time in Rome. and the shortness of his stay offers a better explanation of Hippolytus's silence. He then proceeded to Carthage, where he disseminated his views. Tertullian (adv. Prax.) attacks the heresy under the name of Praxeas, the local teacher, but was really attacking Zephyrinus and Callistus. The facts of his life we gather from Tertullian's notices in c. 1. He was a confessor from Asia Minor, where he had been imprisoned for the faith. Asia Minor was then the seed-plot of Monarchian views. He came to Rome when the Montanist party had just gained over the pope. Praxeas converted the pope back to his own opinion, which was hostile to the Montanists. Most critics agree that the pope so converted by Praxeas was Eleutherus: cf. Bonwetsch's Montanismus, § 174; Hilgenfeld's Ketzergeschichte, p. 569. Dr. Salmon, however, maintains that it was Zephyrinus. [.] By this, says Tertullian, Praxeas did a twofold service for the devil at Rome, "he drove away prophecy and he introduced heresy. He put to flight the Paraclete and he crucified the Father." He then went to Carthage, where he induced some to adopt his opinions. Tertullian opposed him prior to 202, according to Hilgenfeld (l.c. p. 618), and converted Praxeas himself, who acknowledged his error in a document extant among the Catholic party when Tertullian wrote. Praxeas then seems to have disappeared from Carthage, while Tertullian joined the Montanists. The controversy some years later broke out afresh, spreading doubtless from Rome, and then Tertullian wrote his treatise, which he nominally ad-